The Farmers' Union of Wales today welcomed the outcome of a National Assembly inquiry which refused canoeists' requests for free open access to Welsh rivers.

Instead, the Assembly's sustainability committee called for voluntary access agreements by landowners, a licensing system for those using unpowered craft on inland waters and a fee for those making a profit out of water-related recreation.

FUW land use and parliamentary chairman Richard Vaughan, who gave evidence to the committee's inquiry, said the union was concerned at the impact any increased, unmanaged access to inland waterways would have on adjacent farmland as there had been several trespass incidences across farmland by users wishing to reach or leave an inland waterway.

"We believe the committee has made a sensible response to the canoeists' demands and we welcome its recommendations which support reasoned discussion on access issues," he said.

"The union is totally opposed to a statutory approach to access to inland waters as it believes there are major farm management issues associated with such a proposal, given the amount of inland water within Wales.

"The FUW strongly believes that if the Assembly is seeking to improve access to any part of the countryside and want to encourage landowners to participate in voluntary arrangements, it must seriously consider ways in which to reduce the liability burden on farmers.

"Feedback from our members suggests that working in partnership and increasing dialogue will prove far more constructive than the introduction of blunt policy instruments which will foster resentment and conflict between all parties.

"It is also important to ensure that all relevant parties are involved in discussions to ensure that any agreement reflects the commercial and environmental priorities identified for that particular waterway."

Mr Vaughan stressed that the FUW is not opposed to water-based activities. "In fact, we have members involved with diversified enterprises that encourage canoeing, kayaking etc, through voluntary agreements, provision of infrastructure and access points to and from the water.

"Many farmers are also actively involved in their local angling associations and much voluntary time, effort and resources are put in by individuals to maintain and enhance the environmental value of the areas they manage.

"Similarly, landowners may incur costs in maintaining waterways which abut their property. Therefore, it would seem only equitable that recreational users, who do not wish to be party to voluntary arrangements, should be required to pay a license fee to the Environment Agency, to help them maintain the resource they enjoy.

"This method would provide revenue to the Welsh economy and assure landowners that licensing comes with a code of practice, which would highlight the need to access or leave waterways on designated rights of way, and provide all users a stake holding in waterways which would act as justification to preserve and enjoy."

Meirionnydd farmer Richard Vaughan is a new face on the Farmers' Union of Wales' powerful central finance and organisation committee.

Mr Vaughan, aged 46, takes over as the committee's North Wales special member from S4C TV's Ffermio presenter Alun (Elidyr) Edwards who stepped down due to his broadcasting commitments but remains chairman of the union's agricultural education and training committee.

Mr Vaughan, of Pall Mall, Tywyn, was elected during the union's annual general meeting in Aberystwyth on Monday June 14.

He has already been chairman of the union's central land use and parliamentary committee since 2006.

He was FUW Merioneth's county chairman between 2007-2009 and has recently worked assiduously leading the union's representations on the Welsh Assembly Government's controversial Glastir land management scheme.

He is a member of the Meirionnydd Royal Welsh Agricultural Society's Advisory Committee and represents the county on the Membership Committee in Builth Wells. He also sits on the Council of the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society.

He is a former chairman of the Meirionnydd Grassland Society and also vice chairman of Tywyn Town Council as well as other associated committees.

Pall Mall Farm is situated on the A493 north of Tywyn. It is one of two holdings, totalling 550 acres, and is farmed by Mr Vaughan and his wife Dwynwen. Most of their land is at Pant y Panel and Prysglwyd at Rhydymain, near Dolgellau.

A flock of 750 Welsh Mountain Sheep is kept, together with 150 ewe lambs replacements. Around 200 ewes are crossed with Texel and Suffolk rams, and the remainder with Welsh Mountain. Approximately 60 store cattle are kept and fattened over the summer.

Mr Vaughan is well qualified to speak on the Glastir Scheme, since his farm was one of the first to join the Tir Cymen Scheme when Meirionnydd was chosen as a pilot area in the early 1990s. It benefited greatly from the scheme and the farm is now in its sixth year in the Tir Gofal Scheme.

As part of these schemes, capital works have been carried out, including stone walls, fencing, hedging, tree planting, wild life ponds and even an otter den.

Pall Mall Farm has been successfully diversified over the last 40 years. Outbuildings have been converted, two chalets built, and a caravan site established which, by today, has around 100 units.

Mr and Mrs Vaughan have also developed a successful business purchasing and renovating houses in Aberystwyth to be let out as flats and bed-sits. Mr Vaughan sees this as an important part of the business which brings in valuable extra income without taking him away too often from his farming activities.

Meanwhile, all the other six members of the finance and organisation committee - president Gareth Vaughan; deputy president Emyr Jones; vice presidents Glyn Roberts, Eifion Huws and Brian Walters; and South Wales special member Lorraine Howells - were re-elected.

A national charity with 150 years service of support for people working within the farming industry and a Powys farmer were presented with awards recognising their contribution to Welsh agriculture during today's Farmers' Union of Wales annual general meeting.

This year The Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution (RABI) - who received the union's annual "External Award" - commemorates 150 years of unbroken support for the farming community and Bryan Jones - who plays an active role in the FUW at county and national level - was presented with the union's "Internal Award".

Since it was founded RABI has helped many thousands of Welsh farmers, farm workers and their families in times of need and last year, in Wales alone, it spent £282,103 on beneficiaries - almost 10 times more than the total fund-raising income of £29,368 from Welsh counties.

Nationally, in 2008 RABI paid grants totalling £1.6m to 1,503 retired and disabled beneficiaries including 184 working families who received a total of £287,758 either to relieve severe hardship or through the Gateway project.

RABI's formation can be traced back to a letter written to The Times in 1859 by Essex farmer John Mechi who appealed to all farmers to link themselves together as volunteer canvassers. He wrote: "Not profit but charity is the mainspring of your efforts and desire to help those who are helpless, comfort those who are comfortless and support the aged, shelter the homeless and befriend and instruct the innocent and unprotected orphans..."

Today RABI continues as custodian of that vision. Every year it provides around 1,000 Christmas hampers to beneficiaries and continues to support elderly couples, widows, widowers and people of any age who are disabled, along with families struggling to make ends meet.

Mr Jones has farmed at Coed y Parc, Caersws, since 1973 when he took over the tenanted dairy holding. He also farmed in partnership with his parents at Cefn Farm, Hyssington, and both farms are now run in partnership with his wife Susan and their son Andrew.

They run a 70-cow pedigree Friesian Holstein herd plus followers and a flock of 300 Texel and North Cheviot X ewes.

Mr Jones first became a delegate on the FUW's milk and dairy produce committee in 1988, serving as chairman, from 1990 to 1994, at a time of major change with the break up of the then Milk Marketing Board.

As a tenant farmer, he was FUW Montgomeryshire branch's delegate on the union's tenants committee. He was elected the committee's chairman in 1994 and led the union's opposition to the introduction of farm business tenancies.

Mr Jones was elected a vice president of the FUW in 1995 and served on the central finance and organisation committee until 1998. He has given evidence, on behalf of the FUW, to the House of Commons' rural affairs committee in relation to problems in the dairy sector and the BSE enquiry.

In 2003 he gave evidence at the European Parliament in Brussels on a debate relating to the dairy sector.

Mr Jones has represented and continues to represent the FUW on a number of government bodies, such as the Milk Quotas Advisory Group, Industry/Government Working Group on Animal Identification and Registration leading to the establishment of the British Cattle Movement Service, the Milk Quotas Experts Group, and the Bovine Industry Working Group.

He was awarded the FUW/HSBC award for outstanding service to the Welsh dairy industry in 2006.

Mr Jones is a past director of Farmore Farmers and AF Farmore and represents Montgomeryshire on the Genus Advisory Committee. He is a member of Powys Local Access Forum and past vice chairman of Montgomeryshire Local Access Forum.

Mr Jones recently took part in the WAG/HCC sheep EID trials.

Good morning Minister, ladies, and gentlemen, and honoured guests. A very warm welcome to you all, and thank you for having taken the time to attend our Annual general Meeting at this busy time in the farming calendar.

It gives me great satisfaction to be able to stand here and, for the second year running, report on a more positive year for Welsh agriculture, when set against the dismal ? sometimes negative ? incomes received by the industry over a period which lasted more than a decade.

As farmers, we are often accused of moaning, so it is a pleasant experience to be able to welcome the direction in which incomes have moved over the past couple of years, particularly when we look at the misfortune of those who have lost so much due to the current recession.

But that upward movement has been from a very low base, and while the industry has continued to see long?overdue improvements in livestock prices, dairy farmers have seen a fall in incomes and an overdue delay in terms of global commodity price increases being passed back down the chain to primary producers.

And despite the overall improvements in market returns, livestock prices still struggle to cover input costs, while farm income figures show that most farm types would be unsustainable were it not for Single Payments.

These figures point to the central importance of the Common Agricultural Policy ? and particularly direct payments ? to our rural economy.

As far as the Welsh payment system is concerned, the anticipated movement from our historical model towards flat rate single payments will mean significant upheaval for many farm businesses, and this is highlighted by the detailed analysis published by the FUW in July, which represents the most comprehensive report on the issue published to date.

We therefore have a duty not only to look at ways to minimise that disruption, but also to inform the debate on possible future models, and in this context I believe the Assembly Government's decision to disband the Common Agricultural Policy Stakeholders Group, which was set up to look at this important issue, was a significant backward step for Wales. Moreover, it is one that stands in stark contrast to the pro?active approach taken in Scotland by the establishment of the Brian Pack inquiry into the future of agricultural support.

At a European level, it is the issue of the CAP budget, and the reform of the overarching CAP framework post 2013, which are currently dominating debates, and I was recently pleased to hear reports of our new Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs referring to a future CAP which helps to unleash the potential of job creation and innovation within the farm sector: aspirations which we would all no doubt support.

However, I am deeply concerned by other comments made by Mrs Spelman during an informal farm council meeting, which appear to criticise the CAP budget, advocate a movement away from direct payments, and imply that consumers should have access to cheaper, presumably imported, food.

Perhaps too much should not be read into these comments, given the relative infancy of the new coalition Government. However, I am concerned that they were very much in the same vein as the previous Government's policy, which was to increase cheap food imports while all but abandoning agricultural support and the CAP framework.

The folly of such a policy is highlighted in two significant pieces of work commissioned by DEFRA and published during the past year, and while I could quote a long list of figures from that research ? many of which would make your hair stand on end ? the bottom line is that it shows the complete devastation that would befall our rural communities and wider environment should we undermine a framework which supports agriculture, not to mention a further erosion of our food security and an increase in food miles.

Conversely, I believe that the CAP should be viewed as a tailor?made toolbox with which we can address the challenges that growing populations, climate change, rising sea levels, and peak oil production represent to European food security. These challenges are imminent, and will significantly affect future generations, so do we really want to dismantle our toolbox and empty its contents into the bin at this critical time? Of course not - that would be madness!

And to those who talk about rewarding farmers for the provision of public goods, I agree entirely, but I would emphasise this: There is nothing that benefits the public more than the provision of food, produced to the highest standards. To abandon this as a core policy would mean exporting and amplifying environmental problems in a way which would cause untold damage for future generations.

Returning to issues closer to home, the Union's objection to the abandonment of Less Favoured Area payments in favour of the Glastir scheme is well known, and members will no doubt raise their concerns with the Minister later on.However, the revelation that ninety per cent of English hill farmers who previously received LFA payments have not signed up to the English equivalent of Glastir comes as a stark warning of the need to get things right. The Union strongly encouraged its members to 'tick the boxes' on the IACS forms to express interest in the scheme, although I am very mindful of the confusion, based on lack of information and constant changes to the scheme, which is likely to impact on actual applications later this year.

The Assembly Government continues to expect farmers to make business decisions based on sketchy information, and we firmly believe that a twelve month deferment of the scheme is still warranted, so that the All?Wales, targeted, and common land elements of the scheme are finalised and launched together to facilitate business planning, and so that tenants and landlords alike have a clear understanding of the implications of signing up to the scheme.

And in terms of the ambitious timetable for the Glastir application process, I would like to take this opportunity to emphasise the indispensable role that Farm Liaison Officers already play in advising farmers, especially during the IACS period, and the importance of maintaining and indeed enhancing this service, in light of Glastir.

Failure to make sufficient trained staff available to deal with Glastir applications could also leave farmers open to financial penalties due to simple administrative errors, and while the hundreds of thousands of pounds in penalties that have been repaid to FUW members stands as testament to the hard work of our staff in dealing with appeals, the combination of Glastir and the current penalty system could lead to a significant escalation in unfair fines for farmers.

As far as access to the Glastir scheme is concerned, the decision to exclude woodland from the All Wales element, despite its being an important feature of previous schemes is baffling. For many farms, dairy in particular, this has one simple implication: they will be excluded from the Glastir scheme.

This seems a perverse approach, particularly given the role of woodland in terms of carbon sequestration, and I would therefore urge you, once again, Minister, to revisit this matter and allow the inclusion of woodland.

I believe the times I have stood here and not spoken at some point about bovine TB are few and far between. Well today we have at least two speakers ? Professors Glossop and Hewinson ? who will speak about TB, so I do not intend to dwell on the issue. However, it would be wrong for me not to express our ongoing respect for Elin Jones, Christianne Glossop, and all of those involved in the eradication programme, for their resolve in tackling this issue. We all share a common goal, which is to see healthy badgers and cattle living alongside each other. Others, it seems, have a different goal, which is to protect badgers, irrespective of their role in disease transmission.

Sadly, the scale of the bovine TB epidemic often serves to obscure other serious animal health issues, not just in cattle but also in sheep, and I hope we will go some way to redressing that imbalance with our other expert speakers, Lynfa Davies, and Hannah Pearce.

But firstly, I would like to welcome our Minister, Miss Elin Jones.